It’s a petroleum stench — a lot like what you smell when you pump gasoline and get it on your hand.

And if you look down at a shallow puddle, you can see an oily rainbow sheen floating on the water that oozes from the soil.

This riverbank is just downhill from the former Zephyr Inc./Naph-Sol Refining site at 1222 Holton in Muskegon Township, once the home of a petroleum refinery and tank farm. In 2004, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality ranked the Zephyr site as the fourth most hazardous in Muskegon County based on its contaminated soil and groundwater.

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This is first of a two-day series looking at local contamination from oil or gas wells.

• With the state budget shrinking, the possibility looms that, in another year or two, the entire treatment effort could end with the job far from complete.

The outcome, officials say, would be increased movement of toxic petroleum-based contaminants into the Muskegon River, Bear Creek to the north and possibly neighbors’ soil.

• Another possibility is brighter: If the state earmarks environmental bond money for a Zephyr cleanup speedup, as it might later this year, that would lead to detailed mapping of the underground hot spots — something that has never been done — and actual removal of the worst of the dirty soil.

That would not only better protect neighboring waterways and property, it could lead to a long-sought redevelopment of the potentially prime property.

Chronicle | Linda DeVoogd

• In the meantime, the state Department of Environmental Quality has just changed its longstanding cleanup approach in a move expected to save a quarter-million dollars a year.

The move was strongly opposed by the environmental engineer who designed and, until recently, had always managed the state effort.

Department officials say the change is necessary, safe and being monitored. They say it will improve the capture of contaminants given reduced funding and keep some sort of cleanup going for as long as possible — until either the cavalry comes to the rescue ... or the money runs dry.

Controversial cutbacks

Early this month, the DEQ turned off more than half of the Zephyr site’s 65 recovery wells.

The state also began a process that will lead to shutting off a reinjection system that pumps treated water back into the ground to speed the cleanup. Instead, all the treated water will pour into the Muskegon River under a federal discharge permit. Reinjection has already been halted north of Holton Road.

Talks are also under way with Muskegon County officials over the possibility of sending the contaminated water to the Muskegon County Wastewater Management System for treatment, if that proves cheaper than treating it on site.

State officials say they decided on the new approach after a thorough review of the cleanup found that some of the contaminated water was migrating off site without being captured by the wells. That was likely leading to chemicals getting into nearby waterways, particularly Bear Creek.

Courtesy Lakeshore Museum CenterThe Zephyr refinery during its production days.

The state concluded that the reinjection was making the problem worse by raising the groundwater table under part of the site. That “mounding” was believed to cause the underground contaminants to flow faster and in new directions, evading capture by the wells.

John Pawloski, senior environmental quality analyst for the DEQ’s Remediation Division, said agency officials concluded that, with the injection system halted, more than 30 recovery wells could be shut off.

“The amount of money left to fund these projects is shrinking fast,” said Pawloski, the agency’s Zephyr project manager since November. “If we were to continue running it, we would have to look for ways to cut back the annual expenses.”

The cleanup has been costing the state $500,000 to $600,000 per year, Pawloski said. State officials hope the new plan will cut that cost in half.

The exact amount of the savings will depend on bids the state receives from contractors seeking to operate the scaled-back cleanup.

John Pawloski

Heatedly opposing the changes as a threat to the environment was the contract engineer who designed the complicated cleanup system and for 11 years oversaw it.

Mathuram told state officials that, based on his expert analysis, the changes would not only drastically slow the cleanup — already expected to take many more years — but could “eventually compromise the structural and operational integrity of the system,” endangering the whole cleanup and leading to contamination of waterways.

In particular, Mathuram warned that shutting down most of the 20-foot-deep recovery wells at the base of the bluff overlooking the Muskegon River — which was done this month — would lead to gasoline products entering the river. Only a much shallower trench was left operating, which Mathuram said would be inadequate.

DEQ officials disagreed. Eventually, with no meeting of the minds, the state terminated Mathuram’s contract as of Feb. 4. He has not been replaced, another money-saving move.

In a final Feb. 2 memo objecting to the termination, Mathuram wrote, “The proposed direction (of the cleanup) was not in the best interest of human health and environment.”

Pawloski, asked about Mathuram’s contentions, said DEQ officials believe the new system will work as long as it’s monitored and altered as necessary. The monitoring consists of weekly checks of water levels in the wells.

Local environmentalists, officials and neighbors have had mixed reactions to the change.

Living on the edge

“I am very concerned about them having turned off some of the pumps already ... because things have been better recently,” said Delphine Hogston. Hogston since 1981 has lived at 2827 Celery Lane, on low ground a quarter-mile west of the Zephyr site and next to the adjacent Marathon tank farm.

“In the past it was a major disruption to the neighborhood,” Hogston said. There was a time, while Zephyr was doing its own groundwater treatment, when “the smell was just incredible from the railroad tracks (next to the Zephyr site). It was just dizzy-making.”

She also recalls a time when oil from the Marathon site ended up in a neighbor’s basement — which makes her wonder if it could happen again in case the state’s Zephyr planners are wrong. “I’m a skeptic,” Hogston said.

Sue Petersen has lived at 2877 Celery Lane for at least 30 years. She, too, has seen the improvement in recent years and hopes it continues.

“They’ve done a good job, I think of, cleaning up the property right next to the railroad tracks,” Petersen said. “It doesn’t stink like it used to. It was horrible before. And there’s not oil laying on top of the ground, or gasoline, or stuff like there was before. The whole area looks healthier over there.”

Patty Harpster grew up at 999 Wood, on a bluff just across the street from the Zephyr site’s eastern border, in the 1960s and 1970s. Her parents still live there and own more than 80 acres on the riverfront adjoining the Zephyr property.

“I’m pretty disgusted because I walked down there a couple months ago,” Harpster said. Most of the family's land is upstream of Zephyr, but on the small portion that's below it, “My dad’s property is totally polluted. You can just see the oil, smell it.”

But Harpster’s parents, Don and Marie Bosma, are less concerned. They’ve lived in their home since the 1950s. Until 1976 they grew celery on their riverbank land down the bluff, land they still pump to keep it from flooding. “We didn’t have any problems with it,” Don Bosma said of their refinery neighbor.

Muskegon Chronicle/Ken StevensA puddle in the mud near the Muskegon River's north bank, with an oily sheen on the surface.

On a recent March morning, the view down the Bosmas’ bluff was striking. Sandhill cranes could be seen drinking from a puddle on their property. A short way downstream was a railroad trestle over an arm of the Muskegon River.

Dennis Kirksey lives on Bear Lake, just downstream of the pollution plume’s northern tentacles. He’s also on the board of the citizens’ group closest to the Zephyr issue: the Muskegon Lake Watershed Partnership, a coalition that works for the improvement of the Muskegon Lake ecosystem.

Like other partnership leaders, Kirksey is eager for more public input in the DEQ’s decision-making process about Zephyr. “We want to be involved,” Kirksey said. “We want more participation.”

Kathy Evans is the partnership’s staff as well as environmental project manager with the West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission. She learned about the pending cleanup change while exploring the possibility of getting grants for a nonprofit organization to buy the Bosmas’ land and restore it to a fish and wildlife wetland habitat. The news was a surprise.

“The Zephyr site became an intense focus of broad public interest,” Evans said.

“As a result, (the commission and the partnership) are working more closely with the DEQ Remediation and Redevelopment Division to ensure that public involvement is an integral part of future decision-making for the cleanup and redevelopment of the commercial property,” Evans said.

Ken Stevens | ChronicleContractors toured the Zephyr cleanup site Tuesday as part of the bidding process for a future cleanup.

Other members of the watershed partnership fear that Mathuram may be right.

Running dry?

Whatever the consequences of the DEQ’s scaling back of its groundwater cleanup, the possibility exists that the environmental situation could get even worse.

Or better.

The “worse” scenario would come if the state, faced with ever-tighter budgets, dries up all funding for the cleanup.

That possibility is why the DEQ will be awarding only a one-year, rather than a multi-year, contract to operate the scaled-back cleanup, Pawloski said.

The consequences of a shutdown would be even more of the contaminated groundwater migrating off site, into Bear Creek to the north and the Muskegon River to the south — both of them emptying ultimately into Lake Michigan — and into neighbors’ property in the Celery Lane and Bear Creek neighborhoods.

Zephyr’s neighbors are hooked up to city water, but that doesn’t mean having gasoline products under your basement is a good thing.

Zephyr cleanup siteContractors took a tour of the Zephyr cleanup site on March 22, 2011 in Muskegon Township on M-120 near the Marathon tank farm. Contractors were there to tour the site as part of the bidding process for future cleanup.

On the other hand, Pawloski said, regional DEQ staff have nominated the project for additional environmental bond funding to do a better cleanup. With limited bond funds remaining and many high-priority contaminated sites statewide, they’re not sure if Zephyr will make the cut.

If it does, it would mean major progress on a cleanup.

The proposal is to do detailed testing and mapping of the soil to determine exactly where the sources of the contamination are — most likely under the old refinery site just south of Holton Road — then actually remove the worst of the dirt. The state cleanup has never been given enough money to do either of those things.

That would allow the DEQ to reduce its “footprint” on the property and would speed up the overall groundwater cleanup. And that could allow the long-desired redevelopment of the site.

Local government officials welcome a fresh look at the Zephyr cleanup, which has long put a damper on hopes for redeveloping the sprawling site and the adjacent former Northshore Hospital property, also dotted with recovery wells.